The Gold Rush: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Growing up in Colorado, we learned all about the Gold Rush. We'd take field trips up to Leadville and Minturn and other old mining towns, walk through the crumbling mines, learn how to panhandle in the creek, etc... At eight years old, it wouldn't have mattered if you told me that we were on sacred Indian burial grounds taken illegally through government trickery and bold-face lies. I mean, this was cool! For years, I thought the Colorado Gold Rush was some romanticized wonderland of every western stereotype; overnight millionaires losing their fortunes in gambling saloons filled with drunks and prostitutes, huge dynamite explosions echo in city streets lined with gunslingers and lawmen. I thought it was like the Wild West on acid, but now I realize I was dead wrong.
Everything about the Gold Rush was a lie. The journalists advertising the discovery of gold were lying; there was no gold under the grass "just waiting to be plucked up." It was scarce, and those that did manage to find it had to work hard to get it. The American Government lied to the native tribes and invaded the territory granted them in treaties. How ironic that these treaties were infringed upon based on faulty reporting. It seems that all parties involved misunderstood the value of the land.
Taking from COverstreet's blog, I would also like to know if the native peoples ever caught on to importance gold held in white society. I know that native cultures were not as materialistic, but could they not have adapted and used America's obsession with the mineral to their own advantage, as the plains tribes did with the horse? How would the history of the west be different if the Lakota and Hunkpapa realized their Black Hills contained something of incalculable value to the white man? Or did they already realize it? Just some ideas.